To The Hilt: A Sword Swallower’s History of Sword Swallowing might be the first book to come with a doctor’s warning.
“In the event that the only sentence you read is this one, I’d like to begin by saying do not flip through this book and try to swallow a sword,” writes Dr. Brian Witcombe, radiologist, at the start of To The Hilt. “If you read on, do not take any of the anatomical descriptions below as an instruction guide. The phrase ‘Do not try this at home’ has never been more serious.”
The new book, co-authored by sword swallower Dan Meyer and sideshow historian (and Weird Historian) Marc Hartzman, delves into the lives of more than a hundred sword swallowers and includes a foreword by renowned performer Uri Geller. To The Hilt highlights the lives of sword swallowers from the early 1800s through present day, and offers an inside look at the wild stories and experiences of modern sword swallowers, who account for one out of every 300 million people alive today.
Among them, of course, is Meyer, who is widely recognized as the world’s leading expert on sword swallowing and serves as president of the Sword Swallowers Association International. He’s also the founder of World Sword Swallower’s Day, a global TED speaker, and winner of the 2007 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine for medical research on sword swallowing. Known by Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Believe or Not as one of the world’s top sword swallowers, Meyer holds 40 world records and has performed on 16 Got Talents, at 15 Ripley’s Believe It or Not museums, on over 100 TV programs, and live in 60 countries around the world.
“When I first started researching sword swallowing in 1997, there wasn’t much information available—it was truly scarce,” Meyer told Weird Historian. “So I got obsessed with finding as much about every sword swallower as I could. Eventually it became a dream to publish a book like this. Now 28 years later, the dream has become a reality!”
Together, he and Hartzman have written the definitive book on the dangerous art of sword swallowing.
In To The Hilt, you’ll also meet:
- Jacques de Falaise – In 1816, de Falaise signed a contract to perform as an extreme eater—a 19th-century Joey Chestnut of sorts. But instead of gorging hot dogs, he gulped down whole potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, eels, frogs, and more. After a troupe of performers from India demonstrated sword swallowing, Falaise played a dangerous game of one-upmanship by training himself to swallow up to 14 inches of steel to enhance his act.
- Chevalier Cliquot – Born as Francis McLone, his sword swallowing adventures began after running away to the circus at age 16 in the late 1870s. After being unable to pay the show’s sword swallower to train him, McClone taught himself with a 6-inch piece of silver wire. By 1902, decades after mastering the art and adopting the stage name Chevalier Cliquot, he had swallowed swords of up to 22 inches nearly every day for over twenty-three years. Cliquot’s act also included swallowing an electric lightbulb connected to an 8-volt battery, gulping down chained pocket watches and smoking a cigarette while the watch ticked in his stomach, and, as shown to the doctors, up to fourteen 19-inch bayonet swords at one time. But his biggest stunt was to partially swallow a bayonet sword, weighted with a crossbar and two 18-pound dumbbells. He’d allow the rest of the blade to be “kicked” by the recoil of a rifle that was fixed to a spike in the center of the bar and then fired.
- Edith Clifford – Swallowing a bayonet might not sound unusual for a sword swallower. Shooting it down your throat, however, is another story. Edith Clifford began performing the stunt as early as 1903 at Walker’s Museum in Boston. The Boston Post referred to her as “the only lady who swallows a bayonet, having attached it to a loaded cannon, and while the cannon is supported by the bayonet that is down the throat the piece is discharged.” Years later, Harry Houdini called it “the sensation of her act.”
- Alex Linton – Throughout his sword-swallowing career, which began in around 1930, Linton performed alongside many notable sideshow performers, including the Doll Family, armless and legless girl Frieda Pushnik, Rasmus Nielsen, the Fischer giants, and Betty Broadbent, “the living art gallery” tattooed lady. In 1932, he also performed with the entire cast of Tod Browning’s classic film, Freaks, as the sideshow’s resident sword swallower. During a stint at Hubert’s Museum in New York City in the late 1930s, Billboard reported that in his ten-month stay as a knife thrower and sword swallower, he had “thrown an average of 300 bayonets a day or a total of 90,000 for the 10 months without hitting Stella, tattoo girl, his target” and had “swallowed approximately 260 feet of steel per day, or about 78,000 feet in all.” Among that 78,000 feet of steel, Linton often swallowed four 27-inch swords at once, and two with a lit cigarette sandwiched between them. It’s worth noting that those 27-inch swords were going into a 5-foot, 3-inch body. At the time, they also earned him a Guinness World Record.
- Count Desmond – Called the “Evel Knievel of the Sword” by Knievel himself, in 1980 Desmond hanged himself upside down while spinning from a helicopter 200 feet over Niagara Falls while pushing a sword up his throat. And just to defy superstition, he did it on Friday the thirteenth.
Amongst the stories from modern-day performers is a section called “Volunteers Gone Bad,” where you’ll read about the time World of Wonders owner Tommy Breen asked a young woman in the audience to pull a blade from his throat and she inexplicably pushed it in deeper instead. Another section called “Injuries Happen” shares the story of Tyler Fyre’s escape from death after a neon tube broke when reaching the bottom of his stomach. Both are clear reminders to readers of just how real sword swallowing is.
To The Hilt is available from Schiffer Books on February 28, 2025. Pre-order today on Amazon or wherever else you buy books.
